October 17, 1983

Leonard Stone

In this interview Leonard Stone reflected on the meaning of his work, saying he was in the business of bringing joy and happiness into the lives of people. He noted the aggravation involved in bringing an orchestra to the stage, yet found deep reward in seeing audiences feel better when they left a performance than when they arrived. He spoke of the pleasure of witnessing that transformation weekend after weekend.

Stone came to Dallas from Syracuse, and he recalled that before arriving he knew little of the city beyond Roger Staubach, the Cowboys, and the assassination of President Kennedy. Some of his friends, being Democrats who mourned Kennedy, changed their attitude toward him when he moved south. He observed that the city had worked deliberately to reshape its image, recalling that Henry Miller had told him a consultant advised Dallas, not long after the assassination, to present itself as a city of the arts.

Much of the conversation centered on the new home of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Stone spoke with conviction that Dallas would achieve what many major cities, including New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Melbourne, and Baltimore, had failed to do in building a truly great concert hall. He credited the design of I.M. Pei and the acoustics of Russell Johnson, but described himself as the nudge shaping and pushing the project forward. He believed the building would be alive with animation and would stand as a monument, part of a larger arts center he expected would take until the end of the century to complete.

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